


Focus

by McStupid



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Confessions, Eventual Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Let Toph Say Fuck, M/M, Mentions of Anxiety, Post-Canon, Protective Sokka (Avatar), because its zuko, zukka - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27693535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McStupid/pseuds/McStupid
Summary: After the war, Zuko is trying to focus on being a major world leader, thank you very much. It's not HIS fault that his best friend is unfairly hot and kind and smart and funny- Zuko's in trouble.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 240





	Focus

Sometimes Zuko wondered what Uncle had been thinking, granting control of the Fire Nation to someone so obviously fucked up. Actually, he wondered that a lot. 

The newly coronated Fire Lord rubbed his aching temples as he knelt beside the turtleduck pond, trying to calm his breathing. It had always seemed like his secret hiding place when he was a child- the one place to escape Azula’s mind games and his father’s cold disregard- and he needed some of that peace and serenity now. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. The meditation wasn’t working- Zuko couldn’t stop his thoughts from spiraling like a frenzied tornado. God, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t.... How was he supposed to be the  _ Fire Lord _ ? He drew his knees up to his chest and buried his face into the folds of his robes, hyperventilating into the crimson fabric. 

“ _ Pathetic _ ,” sneered a voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like his father. “You might be Fire Lord, but you’re still a coward.”

“Hey… Zuko?” A voice behind the Fire Lord made him jump. “Woah, it’s okay buddy. It’s me- it’s Sokka. Um… Toph said she could feel your heart beating way too fast when you ran past her to get out here. So. You okay?”

Great. Now Toph knew he was weak, too. Zuko swiped at his burning eyes quickly, lifting his head from where it had been pressed against his kneecaps. “I’m sorry. I’m fine.”

“Sorry? For what?” Sokka laughed, still standing a few feet behind him, ignoring the obvious lie. “Can I join?” Without waiting for an answer, he settled next to Zuko’s lanky form, not touching, but close enough to provide comfort.

Zuko said nothing, preferring to watch the family of turtleducks glide serenely across the pond. He should come out here with some bread and feed them soon. His mother used to do that with him. God, his heart was beating so fast it almost hurt. He felt fucking sick.

“Something happen in one of your meetings?” Sokka plucked some foliage from the edge of the pond and idly began plaiting the stems together. 

The meetings were endlessly long- necessarily so- and Zuko was thankful to do his duty to rebuild the world and restore the honor of the Fire Nation. But Agni, it was so hard sometimes. “Just…” his voice sounded scratchy, and he took a deep breath. “Some of the generals. There was a disagreement about paying reparations and they started shouting at each other. A short shoving match. Some threats of firebending at each other. It was n-”

“If you say it was nothing,” his friend quipped, not glancing up from his braid of cattails, “then I will throw your fancy matching swords in a lake.”

“You know they’re called  _ dua _ ,” Zuko grumbled, feeling the smallest smile on his lips. Sokka could always calm him down. “And it  _ was  _ nothing. I just…” he trailed off, not sure how to explain the tightness in his chest and the primal panic that flooded his body when he heard voices raised, when he saw violence anymore. Being a warrior... it was never in his nature- something he had had to do to salvage his honor, and, later, to right some terrible wrongs. And he had never been a coward, never been one to back down from a challenge. But Zuko could never pretend to like violence. And it was so much worse here, in this palace, where he had lived so many years in abject terror. 

Sokka waited silently, deftly weaving his cattails into a circle now. 

“I don’t like it here,” Zuko finally said lamely. “This house.”

“Why not? It’s huge, you have a million servants, always enough food,” Sokka ticked off his list on his fingers, nudging Zuko with his shoulder. “Why do you hate it?”

Zuko shrugged, and thankfully Sokka knew when not to press him. 

“The decor does leave something to be desired,” Sokka smiled sideways at him. “It is depressing as all fuck in some of those rooms.”

Zuko gave a short chuckle. It was so much easier to breathe with Sokka here. “You’re right. I sometimes think it was decorated to be scary on purpose. Want to quit your Water Tribe Ambassador job and be the royal interior decorator?”

“And give away the ancient art of igloo decorating? Gran-Gran would never forgive me,” Sokka replied airly, finishing his cattail creation. He had made a braided circlet of the plants, which he plopped into Zuko’s inky hair. “Much nicer crown than your other one,” he nodded appreciatively. “Very handsome.”

Zuko smiled and tried to ignore the way his stomach had exploded into butterfly-birds when Sokka had called him handsome. Friendship was enough, and he would be lost without it, alone in this terrifying palace. “Come on,” he stood and extended a hand to help Sokka up. “Let’s go get dinner.”

***

The next evening was Toph’s goodbye feast. She was off to Ba Sing Se to whip a new generation of Dai Li into shape. It was noble work, but Zuko would miss her. Aang and Katara were already gone, on a mission to help the former Fire Nation colonies learn how to govern themselves again, and the thought of one more person leaving created a pit in Zuko’s stomach. 

He slid into the feast a little late, fresh out of a meeting with a group of traders from the North Pole. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Are you kidding?” Toph kicked him under the table, hard. “I’ve had my eye on the clock this entire time!”

“I’m sorry, I...” Zuko trailed off as Sokka and Toph burst into laughter. “You know, you’re gonna need to get more than one joke.”

“I can’t hear your criticism. I’m blind,” Toph replied airily, slurping her fire salamander stew in a way that would have had his childhood nannies passing out in horror and shock. He grinned.

“So, are you gonna teach the Dai Li any metalbending?” Sokka asked, digging into his bowl of stewed sea prunes. Zuko happened to know that Sokka had so charmed his head chef, with his jokes and frequent visits, that the kitchens now cooked Water Tribe delicacies just for him. 

“You can do  _ what _ ?” Zuko almost choked on his spicewhiskey. 

“Oh, yeah,” Toph nodded, stealing a sea prune out of Sokka’s bowl and ignoring his disgruntled yelp with the air of someone who had heard it a thousand times before. “Figured it out when my parents sent these two goons to kidnap me and shove me in a metal box this one time. Not that hard, honestly.”

Zuko was at a loss for words for a moment, staring at Toph over the rim of his glass. “You’ve led such a colorful life,” he settled for saying.

Toph grinned appreciatively. “What are you two idiots gonna do while I’m gone?”

“Probably just Incredibly Important Government Work,” Sokka replied haughtily. “You know, changing the world, one scroll at a time. Very important stuff. You probably wouldn’t understand.”

“And here I didn’t know you could even read,” Toph sneered.

“Toph....” Zuko cut in. “Can  _ you... _ read?”

“Oh. Fuck. Um, no,” Toph admitted over Sokka’s peals of laughter. 

“BURNED BY THE FIRE LORD!” Sokka squealed in delight and then dissolved into hysterical laughter at his own joke. Even Zuko had to laugh. Watching Sokka entertain himself never got old. 

Toph rolled her eyes fondly. “Well if you ever get tired of being Zuko’s  _ fire bitch  _ and want to join the action again, I’ll find you a job in Ba Sing Se.”

“ _ Fire bitch _ !?” Both boys yelped at the same time. 

Toph just laughed quietly to herself and changed the subject. 

Later that evening, when Toph had excused herself for one last drink (read: bender) with some of the palace guards she had befriended, Sokka and Zuko found themselves meandering the palace corridors together, just a little tipsy from the spicewhiskey.

“Do you... do you want to be in the action again?” Zuko was afraid of the answer, but he had to know. “Like Toph said?”

“Let me think,” Sokka chuckled, nudging him in the ribs with a pointy elbow. “Would I rather almost  _ die  _ every day, or would I rather live in a _ fucking palace  _ with my best friend?”

“Okay, point taken,” Zuko smiled as if “best friend” didn’t hurt to hear. Being best friends was more than he deserved, and he should consider himself lucky to have this much. It was greedy to want more. 

***

Sokka cornered him after a meeting with some of the generals a few weeks later. “Fire Lord Zuko,” he bowed respectfully. 

“What are you doing?” Zuko cast an eye around for any of the more judgemental courtesans who Sokka might have to put on airs for, but found the corridor empty of them. 

“Sire,” Sokka dropped even lower into his bow and Zuko rolled his eyes fondly. “My lord, my liege, Your Most Flamey Majesty, His Highest Hotne-”

“What do you want?” Zuko cut in. As much as he loved Sokka’s teasing (especially now that Sokka was the only one not kowtowing and bowing all the time), he was exhausted and felt the old anxieties creeping like icy tendrils into his chest and he had so much work to do and those _ fucking  _ trade representatives from the Northern Watern Tribe were coming this week and he wasn’t anywhere near ready for _ that  _ and-

“Dude.” Sokka chuckled, straightening up. “You haven’t had a day off, like, the whole time I’ve been here. I cleared your schedule. What do you want to do with the day?”

“But the meeting about the new school curriculum-”

“Is being handled by your new Minister of Education.”

“And the hearing on fishing rights-”

“I sent the Minister of Fish and Game.”

‘And the-”

“Zuko.” Sokka put a hand on each shoulder. “You have got to fucking learn how to delegate. All the meetings are being attended by the relevant Minister. Cause, like… that’s their fucking job.”

Zuko let out a big breath. He needed a day out of the palace. It was weighing on him, the memories pressing themselves, unbidden, into his skin. “Okay. Let’s… anywhere but the palace.”

Sokka grinned.

As it turned out, being best friends with someone who had once been on the run had its perks. For example, when Sokka chose a picnic spot with the promise that nobody would be able to find them, he was so right. 

“How did you even find this place?” Zuko peered into the yawning cave set into a cliffside on a beach near the eastern gate of the capital city.

“Oh,” Sokka glanced up from spreading a picnic blanket across the sand at the mouth of the cave. “Me and Aang and Toph and Katara lived here for a while- before the invasion on the day of the eclipse. It was kind of nice, if you, like, can set aside the fact that everyone around us would have killed us on sight if they knew who we were.” He chuckled, but Zuko looked at his feet. “Did we ever tell you- Aang even went to a Fire Nation school!”

“He did not,” Zuko chuckled in disbelief, shucking off his royal slippers and digging his toes into the sand with a relieved sigh.

“And I went to a parent conference with the teacher!” Sokka howled. “Come, sit, and I’ll tell you all about Wang Fire.”

By early evening, Zuko felt so much lighter and calmer. It had something to do with all the spicewhiskey, but it really had more to do with spending a day swimming, eating, and simply being with Sokka. Zuko loved being around Sokka- just seeing the Water Tribe boy had a way of making him feel like a normal seventeen year old, not a monarch with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He had to work on pushing that particular emotion down before he drowned in it. Zuko feared it might be too late for that. Fucking Sokka.

“So,” Sokka topped off Zuko’s glass before taking a swig of his own drink, “is it really just Fire Lord stuff that you’re this stressed about? I know you, Zuko. This seems like more.”

Zuko looked up at the rising moon and considered his answer. Uncle always said he needed to be more trusting, and if he was going to take the plunge… there was nobody he wanted to trust more. The Fire Lord sighed. “Yes and no.”

Sokka was silent, waiting for Zuko to continue. It was nice, having someone’s attention, and not just because of the royal family name. 

“My mom,” he finally explained. “I’ve dispatched a team to search for her. It’s been… difficult, waiting for news.”

Sokka narrowed his eyes in confusion. “I thought- Katara said she was… dead.”

“No. I told her that the Fire Nation had taken my mother away, and that was true. But she isn’t dead,” Zuko took a gulp of his drink to fortify himself. “I hope not, anyway. My father always made it seem… like she wasn’t.”

“What happened?” Sokka’s huge blue eyes shone earnestly in the moonlight, and Zuko had to force himself to meet them. 

“When I was young, my father disrespected my grandfather by requesting that he become Fire Lord instead of Uncle Iroh, who had just lost his son- my cousin, Lu Ten- in the war. Grandfather was upset and demanded that Father kill me, to suffer in the same way as Uncle. He said… he said that my father needed to know the pain of losing a firstborn son.” Sokka gasped, but Zuko ignored him. If he didn’t finish this now, he was never going to. “Azula was thrilled, of course, but Mother… Well, I don’t know exactly what happened. But in the morning, Grandfather was dead, Father was the Fire Lord, and Mother had disappeared.”

“Zuko…” Sokka breathed, and the Fire Lord was shocked to see that his blue eyes were wet. “Your own dad… he was going to...”

“See? Homicide must run in the family,” Zuko half-smiled, taking another swig. Unexpectedly, Sokka launched himself across the blanket and wrapped his arms tightly around Zuko, causing spicewhiskey to slosh everywhere and soak his left sleeve. “Sokka-”

“No,” comes the other boy’s muffled voice, hugging the Zuko impossibly closer.. “You need a hug  _ now. _ Tui and La, Zuko, that’s… that is so fucked up. I can’t imagine not having you in my life.”

Nobody had ever told him that that was fucked up before. Well, Uncle had said so in a proverb-y type of way, but most of the people who knew had been in favor of his murder. And it wasn’t really a part of his life that he wanted to share with the general public. So. Made it kind of hard to gain sympathy. He just kind of… carried that burden around. 

A tear dripped down Zuko’s scarred cheek, tracing the pattern of his burn scar. “Thanks,” he mumbled, daring to lean into the embrace. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been held like this. It had probably been by his mother. He sniffled. “I just… I miss her,” he admitted quietly, into Sokka’s blue tunic. 

“Will you tell me about her?” Sokka asked gently, a hand rubbing his back in gentle circles.

Zuko wanted to sob from the tenderness that made him so uncomfortable but that he craved so deeply. He curled in closer to Sokka’s warmth. “She was… she loved me so much. I could tell. She kept me as safe as she could from Azula and my father. We used to feed the turtleducks together.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help find her, I will,” Sokka promised, drawing himself up to his tallest height, chest puffed out and wolf tail waving in the salty breeze. Looking up at him, still pressed against Sokka’s broad chest, Zuko thought he had never seen his friend look more like a warrior, more like the chief he was destined to someday become. 

Zuko nodded. “I’ll tell you if they find anything.” And then, the words feeling foriegn on his tongue, “I trust you.”

***

One evening, Zuko and Sokka were sitting in the Fire Lord’s official study, each working diligently at their own desks. The silence was comfortable, broken only by the scratching of quill pens on scrolls and the occasional thoughtful sigh. Zuko was having trouble concentrating, because every few lines, he would steal a glance at Sokka, who was too engrossed in his work to notice. His hair was getting longer, although still pulled back into his traditional warrior’s wolf tail. His time in the Fire Nation had given Sokka’s already olive skin a dark tan, which contrasted beautifully with the arm tattoos he had been honored with during his last visit to the South Pole. Agni, but he was beautiful and Zuko fairly ached with want. 

“Fuck!” Sokka suddenly slammed down his pen and jerked to his feet, making Zuko jump. 

“What?” He snapped, half alarmed and half aggravated at the abrupt interruption. 

“I can’t concentrate on this, and I  _ need  _ to,” Sokka huffed irritably, stalking towards Zuko’s desk. “It’s that treaty thing I was telling you about-”

“Shipping rights, I remember,” Zuko nodded cautiously, still confused by this change from Sokka’s normal demeanor. 

“Yeah. Kind of a big deal. So I need to be able to focus.” Sokka’s eyes were intense as he leaned across Zuko’s desk, palms planted in the middle of the wood so that he could look directly at Zuko.

“O...kay?” Zuko was starting to get nervous. 

“I can’t concentrate if I don’t just fucking say this,” Sokka’s voice dropped, “but if you never want me to bring it up again, that’s fine. I can internalize like a champ. But… I seriously can’t think about anything else, Zuko.”

Zuko raised an eyebrow, inviting the warrior to continue. He had never seen Sokka like this before, and if it weren’t for the unshakeable trust he held in the Water Tribe warrior, Zuko would definitely be afraid right now. 

“I am so in love with you,” Sokka said simply, still leaning across the desk, staring directly into Zuko’s golden eyes. “I think about you all the time. It’s been months, and I just needed to say it. So. There.” He pushed off of Zuko’s desk and returned to his own, picking up a scroll and appearing to begin reading it.

Zuko was in a state of shock. He just sat there, completely frozen, while thoughts whipped through his brain. Sokka… loved him? Sokka knew him better than anyone else, and Sokka loved him? That couldn’t be. But Sokka never lied. He would never say something so cruel. Unless he was mistaken? But Sokka was rarely wrong about much- he knew how to read people and situations and come up with a plan or solution for anything. So… it must be true. Sokka loved him. Zuko couldn’t contain the slightly manic laugh that bubbled up out of him, as though all of the joy he was feeling simply had to explode out of him somehow.

Hearing Zuko’s laughter, Sokka dropped his pen. “Well. If it’s that funny to you, I’ll take my leave now,  _ Fire Lord _ .”

“No, wait!” Zuko stumbled over his robes and nearly tripped over a stack of leather bound legal tomes on the floor, hastily grabbing Sokka by his royal blue sleeve before he could depart in a huff. “I’m just so happy,” he shrugged by way of explanation, before leaning into a kiss.

Sokka tasted like the noodles with fire sauce he had had for dinner, and he smelled like the ocean. His lips were rough and his skin was soft and Zuko was pretty sure he was going to float away out of pure delirium. He pulled away and rested his forehead against Sokka’s. 

“Can you focus now?”

Sokka answered him by laughing into their next kiss.


End file.
